In an optical communications network, an optical signal is modulated with digital information and transmitted over a length of optical fiber from a source location to a destination location. A multicast optical switch (herein referred to as a multicast switch (MCS)) allows an optical signal (e.g., including one or more wavelength channels) from a single optical fiber to be switched, simultaneously, to a plurality of optical fibers. In some cases, the MCS may allow a plurality of optical signals, from a plurality of input optical fibers, to be switched to a plurality of output optical fibers such that optical signals in any of the plurality of input optical fibers can be multicast into non-overlapping subsets of the plurality of output optical fibers.